The Case Breakers, a team of former law enforcement investigators, journalists and military intelligence officers, told Fox News on Wednesday, that they have identified the Zodiac Killer, the elusive serial killer, who claimed to have murdered 37 people in California during the late 1960s.
The cold case team, led by retired FBI officials. has identified the killer as Gary Francis Poste, who passed away in 2018.
The Zodiac Killer is connected to five murders in the San Francisco area in 1968 and 1969. As per the History channel, the killer gained notoriety after sending “bizarre public letters brimming with horrific threats, demented demands and mysterious ciphers teasing his identity” to newspapers and law enforcement. In these letters, all signed with a crosshair-like symbol, the killer claimed to have killed 37 people. In one such letter, the killer “threatened to kill again if newspapers did not publish the cipher”.
The Zodiac Killer has inspired multiple American horror films and shows, including the 2007 film Zodiac, which featured Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, and Robert Downey Junior in the lead roles and the 1971 film Dirty Harry starring Clint Eastwood.
The cold case team has said that they have now identified Poste as the Zodiac Killer through new forensic and physical evidence, as well as accounts from eyewitnesses.
The cryptograms used by the serial killer were used to decipher his identity, Jen Bucholtz, a former Army counterintelligence agent who works on cold cases, told Fox.
In a statement, the cold case team said that they “filed court affidavits, and secured decades of pictures from Poste’s former darkroom,” that includes “photographic proof of irrefutable scars on our Zodiac’s forehead”, that match the scars on a sketch of the Zodiac Killer.
The team says it used evidence from the murder case of Cheri Jo Bates, whom the team believes Poste killed in 1966, to connect the dots that pointed towards Poste’s involvement. Bates was found dead near the Riverside City College campus after she was reported missing.
The Riverside Police Department’s Homicide Cold Case Unit, however, told Fox News “The Cheri Jo Bates case remains an open investigation and we do not have any additional details to release at this time.”
Speaking about the Riverside Police Department, Bill Proctor, member of the Case Breakers team, told Fox, that the lack of acknowledgment has “everything to do with ego and arrogance.”
The series of evidence that the team claims to have uncovered connecting Bates and Poste, includes the recovery of a Timex wristwatch that is said to be bought from a military base PX. “In the mid-1960s, Poste was a US Air Force veteran receiving medical check-ups for a gun accident injury at the March Air Force Base hospital – just a 15-minute drive from Bates’ college murder scene,” the statement from the team said.
The forensic lab additionally noted “paint spattered on the wristwatch’s face”- which aligned with Poste’s then employment as a house painter. The heel print, later confirmed to be of military-styled pair of boots, was collected, along with sample of the killer’s brown hair in Bates’ hands.
In addition to this, the Case Breakers said they have accumulated eyewitness accounts that suggest that Poste was the infamous killer who was notorious for sending letters with cryptograms, to news publications and police department.
A whistleblower, whom the Case Breakers call Wil, revealed that he was a part of the Zodiac’s criminal posse, that roamed for decades in California’s High Sierra. While he later escaped, he said Poste groomed him into a “killing machine.”
Wil added that he witnessed Poste burying the murder weapons, and directing the team to the site.
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He said, “He had a great side. He just didn’t have a conscience. He could kill indiscriminately. And I mean, you know, he’s pretty much proven that over the years, he couldn’t even stop after he moved up here. Uh, he still had to continue to kill, even if it was small animals just to make himself feel better. I’ve seen him kill bears, deer, Otter, um, ferrets. Marmots, just anything that lived, he liked to shoot them, watch [them] fall down. He liked to mess with the carcasses when he was done. He just got bloody.”
Additional statements includes the one made by a woman who identified as Michelle, and said that “she was was common-law married to Poste’s son.” Michelle said that she was a victim of harassment from Poste and his posse.
“He targeted young men who didn’t have a father figure,” said Michelle. “It was a posse of three but the one [Poste] did a lot of damage. He still has some kind of control… and he’s gone.”